Reps recovered N450bn unspent fund in 2007 budget - Speaker

Isaac Shobayo, Jos - 04.03.2008

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Honourable Dimeji Bankole, has said that the application of the input-output-outcome variables introduced by the National Assembly to track budget performance has led to the recovery of over N450 billion of unspent funds from the 2007 fiscal year.

Bankole, who disclosed this in Jos, Plateau State, at the opening of a conference on “Nigeria’s Revenue Collection/Allocation and Public Institution Funding,” said inasmuch as the House believed that revenue collection and allocation were important, it also believed that the effective implementation of development project was equally important.

He said national pro-gress and development could be measured if budget targets were not set and regularly assessed, hence the introduction of the variables.

The Speaker said the House had been re-engineering taxation as a source of revenue to finance development projects. Bankole said the philosophy of legislation in the area of revenue collection was such that it should help government design a tax regime and management framework that would spur accelerated and sustainable economic growth as well as reduce poverty.

The Speaker, who said the House recognised the importance of enhanced taxation to the sustaina-bility of democrcacy and development in Nigeria, added that democracy in the long run would be undermined if there was little economic development.
“Unless we increase the economic pie, as it were, competition for

scarce goods and services will degenerate into virtual warfare and undermine efforts to consolidate democracy. One way to increase the economic pie is to streamline tax regime and its regulatory institutions so that more revenue will accrue to the government,” he said.